


99 Problems

by francisabernathywontpayhisparkingtickets



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky turns 99, I know I know I'm sorry Nobody likes second person, M/M, POV Second Person, Stucky - Freeform, birthday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 01:30:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6264184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/francisabernathywontpayhisparkingtickets/pseuds/francisabernathywontpayhisparkingtickets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe you're getting better. Maybe it's just the smell of him on the clothes you wear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	99 Problems

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a little late and this is short, but I couldn't stop thinking about it so here.
> 
> Also, FYI, Bucky's thought process here is based on my own mental illness. I do not have PTSD like I think Bucky might, but I tried to do the feeling of dissociation justice.

Those are his pajamas you're wearing. The pants ride up near your belly button and you have to tie the draw string tightly to keep them from falling. You catch yourself laughing, the sound grating and dusty after all those years of practiced silence.  _Steve would drown in this thing._  


 

Suddenly you're dizzy, half way between here and there. You see a boy with a crooked smile, blood bright against white teeth. You know the man is asleep in the next room. Usually these memories fade, but this time you can hold him up to the light.

 

Maybe you're getting better. Maybe it's just the smell of him on the clothes you wear. But, for the first time since you died, you see him completely.

 

A sick child, running to spite his broken lungs. A man, war-torn and larger, taking your hand under the table in a seedy bar where no one will recognize you. A reckless teenager, picking fights he can't win, a gleam in the eye that isn't swollen shut. An angel you barely recognize, dragging you from the depths of a German hell. An artist with long fingers, asking about a color he can't see. A lost hero in a new world, desperately seeking something familiar, finding you.

 

You remember maladies, and bad days, and worse days. You remember shivering, and shared beds, and a confused tangle of arms and legs. You remember protecting him.

 

Then, the fog rolls back in and you wait for the clarity you feel to recede with the memories, but it doesn't. You've been looking for a new assignment ever since you were reprogrammed. Now you have one.  _Clarity_.

 

You were James Buchannon Barnes. You are not anymore. But the one thing you have in common with your former self is sleeping in the next room over, and if memory serves, which it so rarely does, he is probably shivering.

 

You're careful to place the arm that is not made of you far away from him, but not the other one. The arm of flesh, and blood, and bone wraps tightly around him. A stiffening, a sharp inhale, then  _Buck._  


_Are you okay?_

 

You have to remind yourself how to speak.  _I remembered something._  


You expect him to ask more questions, but, instead, a calloused hand traces your shoulder down to the arm that is not made of you. Long fingers wrap around cool metal ones.

 

  
_You know it's you birthday today?_ _That's 99 birthdays now, I think._  He's wrong.

 

_This is the first._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
